


What Happens Next

by Velvedere



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Enormous Guilt Trips, Ghost Sex, Haunting, Loki is a dick, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-17
Updated: 2014-01-17
Packaged: 2018-01-09 01:59:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1140106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Velvedere/pseuds/Velvedere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki "haunts" Thor after the events of The Dark World.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Happens Next

What happened next, happened very slowly.

The first incident was at an evening banquet, only a few nights after the events of the Convergence that nearly shattered the Realms, and that dreadful journey to Svartalfheim.

Thor dropped his cup and overturned his chair in the midst of the revelry, silencing those immediately near.

“Loki?”

His voice broke, choking on the name all but forbidden in the citadel.

He lifted a trembling hand, either in beckoning or affirmation, across the hall toward a darker corner, less illuminated than the rest.

“Loki!”

Others turned, following his gesture. Some grew tense with fear and others reached for their weapons. But they saw nothing.

Yet Thor stood, transfixed.

“Thor,” said Sif gently, worriedly, as she put a hand on his arm. Thor started as though caught unaware, and looked to her. His face was pale and wild.

His eyes returned to that place across the hall, holding himself still.

“Nothing,” he gasped, once a moment had gone. He took a breath with some difficulty and lowered his eyes. “It’s nothing.”

He righted his chair, and took his seat.

The feast continued.

The next incident occurred over a month later.

Thor walked with Jane through the streets of Asgard, showing her more of the city – slower now, that they faced less dire circumstances – when he stopped at a corner intersection.

Body growing tense, he stared, the lines on his neck strained as he held himself taut. His look was fixed down a less populated byway, a set of stairs leading to a city square.

“What is it?” Jane frowned, following his look. She saw the same merchant stalls and what passed for Asgardian commoners, but nothing unusual.

Thor swallowed with an effort.

“You go on,” he said, very quietly. “I’ll be along.”

Jane did not go easily, but she went. She looked back over her shoulder before the crowd closed in between them, concern and confusion weighing on her features. She saw a flash of red cloak as Thor disappeared into the byway. Hurrying.

As though he was chasing someone.

When she met him at the citadel again, only a short while later, Thor would not speak of what he had seen. Or not seen. He would scarcely meet her eye.

He went to Heimdall first for counsel.

“How does he appear to you?” he asked.

“As one dead,” Thor murmured, his head bowed while he stood beside the gatekeeper in his observatory. The countless spread of stars before them were not such a comfort as they had been in times past. Instead of promise, they offered only void.

“Then you have not seen him?”

“I have not.” Heimdall’s grip tightened subtly around the hilt of his sword. “But Loki has deceived me before.”

“I have often wanted to think him alive,” Thor confessed. “That it was only another trick. I have thought him dead before, but this...” His voice faded to nothing, choked by the burn of tears behind his eyes as he thought of Svartalfheim’s cold wind. The biting sand. Loki’s body growing too quickly cold in his arms.

“It could be your own imaginings,” rumbled Heimdall, easing Thor’s mind back to the present. “If you do wish to see your brother so badly.”

Heimdall maintained a neutral tone when speaking of Loki, for which Thor was grateful.

“I would not wish to see him in such a state,” he muttered wretchedly.

Gaunt figure stretched thinly over bare bones. Hollowed, accusing eyes. Hair and garments alike torn with teeth made of black sand.

Thor closed his eyes.

“The minds of men are rarely in charge of where the conscience leads,” said Heimdall.

Thor thanked him for his wisdom, and left.

A fortnight later, it happened again.

Thor lay in his bed, unable to sleep, though the comfort of Jane’s arms lay around him. Their shared warmth seemed little more than a passing distraction under heavier thoughts that weighed upon his mind.

He saw Loki, white and sudden, in the corner of the room.

Thor did not move, though he ceased to breathe. He watched, waited to see what the apparition would do.

If it was truly as Heimdall said, that these phantoms were drawn from Thor’s own longing, then why was he not visited by visions of his mother as well? His sense of loss at her death was no less deep or painful then Loki’s.

Perhaps because he had seen her off. He’d stood upon the shore at her funeral and watched her essence rise to the stars. There had been time to mourn. Time to say goodbye.

There had been nothing for Loki. His body had been left for the sands to bury, with only a few dead elves for company.

Perhaps that was why the clinging sense of his brother would not leave him.

The apparition did nothing. It only lingered, staring, meeting Thor’s eyes with an unflinching gaze. The likeness of Loki held its hands out and away from itself, as though its own body was painful to touch. The nails on each hand were jagged and black.

Gradually, it faded, returning by shades to the darkness.

Thor did not sleep that night.

Months came and went with no reappearance. For a short, blissful time, Thor thought he had managed to forget.

Then came a week of nightmares in which a skeletal Loki sat on his chest, little more than tattered leathers and a grinning skull, black sand pouring from his mouth as he gargled Thor’s name.

Thor woke himself with screams and thrashing, nearly crushing Jane in the process.

His friends tried to help.

They laughed and cajoled and urged him to go out riding with them, or to the sparring arena, or to one of the local taverns.

Thor smiled, appreciative, but the nightmares had taken a heavy toll on his thoughts, as had the lack of the sleep on his eyes. He could find little merriment in the distraction of song and drink.

When the nightmares came again and he nearly hurt Jane once more, he sent her away. Fearful of her well-being before his own.

She did not go willingly, and not without making him swear to return. Only then did she agree to leave more permanently for Earth, and her science.

“It is not your fault,” Sif said to him in a moment when they found themselves alone. “You did everything you could.”

“It was not enough,” mumbled Thor.

“They’re only dreams. They cannot harm you.”

Thor said nothing. He stood, his arms folded as he gazed with her out over Asgard from the citadel’s view, finding it particularly beautiful in the late afternoon light.

The waning sun lit his hair like a golden crown.

“The men,” Sif went on. “They’re worried for you.”

Thor ducked his head.

“I worry for myself.”

“Won’t you speak to your father of this?”

“My father does not need to know.” He added bitterly: “He does not care to know.”

Thor had already tried.

Odin was, perhaps not unexpectedly, of no help.

“That foundling is dead,” he had snapped, angry at having been disturbed while looking over some old maps. “Let him rot.”

Sif shook her head.

“You cannot continue this way. You’ll drive yourself mad.”

Thor did not look at her. His expression remained fixed over the view of the city. His eyes were distant, seeking that which he could not find.

It felt very unlike Thor to hold in his heart.

She touched his arm, drawing his eyes to her at last.

“You do not have to fight this battle alone,” she said.

Thor met her gaze. Perhaps a moment longer than was proper.

Then he turned away.

“Thank you, Sif.” He nodded, voice dipped in sincerity. “I know if I am ever in need, I may call on you.”

Sif’s lips pressed together tightly. Thor saw the rigid tension in her stance. He heard her draw a breath, as though she would speak.

He stood stoic.

Whatever Sif did not say hung heavy upon the air.

She turned at last, mumbling her dismissal as she left.

Twice more in the following season Thor glimpsed Loki roaming the halls of the citadel. Once he saw him in the gardens, his face upturned to watch the flower petals fall.

Another time Thor heard his name whispered close to his ear, felt a brush on the back of his neck, when no one was there.

At last, he decided to confront the ghost.

He sat alone in his bedchamber long into the nights, waiting for it to reappear.

He did not have to wait long.

*****

Lanterns burned low in the late hour, casting deep gold and black shadows across the chamber as Thor faced the likeness of his brother. He sat at his bedside, and did not rise when the ghost appeared.

In all other instances when he had tried to pursue the apparition, it had vanished.

Thor held himself tense, his breath falling away at the ghost’s sudden and unremarkable appearance. It did not look so torn and haggard as it had before. It was only lean, and pale.

Thor met its eyes as it looked upon him, and ventured to speak.

“Loki...”

He heard his own voice come quiet and cracked. It sounded hollow in the empty chamber, suddenly too large and too empty.

The ghost did not respond.

“Loki,” Thor spoke again, finding more stable ground. “Why are you doing this...?”

No sooner did Thor voice the words then a great wave of sorrow and reproach swept over him. It fell so heavy Thor had no choice but to put his face down in one hand, strain himself to hold back the sob that rose immediately in his chest. Tears burned at the corner of his eyes.

“Is this my punishment?” He strove to speak amidst the tearing of his heart. “You will haunt me the rest of my days?”

The ghost said nothing.

“You know I did everything I could. I would have died in your place had I the power.”

The excuses sounded empty even as he spoke them. He could speak more, of Jane and her exposure to the harsh planet, of the brewing sandstorm just on the horizon, of the pressing need to return to Earth to stop Malekith and his plans.

Yet no excuse he could offer erased the fact he had left Loki’s body there among the wastes, like the forgotten criminal all of Asgard believed he was.

It had been Thor’s plan. His idea. His design to escape to Svartalfheim with the aether.

His fault his brother had died.

As the thoughts came to him – things he had known all along, in the depths of his conscience – the sorrow eased. Perhaps that was what the ghost wanted.

“I am sorry, brother,” he strained, looking to Loki’s image. “I cannot say it enough.”

Thor pushed himself forward on the bedside, his hands clenched tight over his knees, to still them from reaching out.

“Tell me what I must do to make amends. Anything. Name it, and I will obey.”

He looked to the ghost with a yearning, eager to do any task required of him, if it meant they both could rest from this torment.

The ghost met his eyes a long moment before it slid a single step forward.

“Brother,” it finally spoke. The sound of a snake gliding over sand.

“Yes,” Thor gasped, joy and grief both in his heart at Loki’s acknowledgement. He lifted his hand to hold out in open offering. “Yes, Loki...”

The ghost did not take it, but drifted closer.

“Speak those words,” it whispered. “Those words you last spoke to me in that place.”

Thor felt himself still. Felt the color leave his face. Be it the ghost’s doing or his own, he knew what words the ghost would have him say.

Those whispered, anguished secrets confessed at last against Loki’s dead lips. Too late to be heard, but no less power inherent.

The sort of power that could shatter and rebuild worlds.

Thor said them as he’d held Loki’s body, uncaring of the sand and the storm and Jane watching nearby. The wind tore his voice away, kept the secrets concealed between the two of them. He only wished Loki had still been there to hear them. To know it when he kissed him.

“I...love you,” he whispered. His eyes rose as the ghost stood over him, open and exposed in their need for some sort of reconciliation. Perhaps judgement. “I have always loved you.”

“You have forgotten me,” said the ghost.

“No! How could I?”

It was so close now. Thor could only just touch it... But he dared not, no matter how his hands trembled to reach out. Fearful they would pass through nothing. That he would startle the ghost away. Insubstantial as it was, this phantom was all he had left of his brother.

That, and a scar.

The ghost looked over Thor’s bed, to the side on which Jane usually slept.

“You have forgotten me,” it said again, “and replaced me with another.”

“You cannot be replaced.”

“You found love elsewhere.”

“Am I allowed to hold only love enough for one?” said Thor, miserable.

The ghost returned its gaze to him. It moved with uncanny stillness, possessing not even the slight trembles of a being that had to breathe and beat its heart. Thor felt a weight upon him, as though being measured. He dropped his eyes, unable to maintain his look for long. He cared not what the ghost decided, if he deemed him worthy of forgiveness or chose to continue its vengeful torment.

Thor could only think he deserved it.

He looked to the belts and clasps across the front of the apparition’s leathers, holding its armor in place. Thor recognized them as the same Loki had worn when they’d made their escape from Asgard. Tarnished and uncared for, Loki would be appalled at their state, were he still alive.

Thor wanted nothing more than to reach out and press his palm there. To feel warmth and life beneath those leathers. To know his brother still breathed...

The ghost moved.

It slid suddenly up onto the bed, knees settling astride Thor’s thighs as Thor leaned back to accomodate without thought. His hands lifted automatically, coming to rest at Loki’s – at the ghost’s – hips, to stop its advance.

He grew still inside to feel soft, supple leather under his fingertips. The firm resistence of body and bone beneath. But so cold.

Breath stolen, Thor lifted his face again.

“You’ve forgotten me,” said the ghost.

“No...”

“You left me there.”

“I’m sorry...”

“Alone.”

“I am so sorry...”

Its hand slid beneath his chin, took hold to force Thor’s neck back to a near-painful angle.

It dragged a thumb over his lips.

“You wish to make amends?” it hissed.

Caught and held by such solid touch from a ghost – Thor wondered if he had crossed into the realm of sleep without his being aware...was this a dream? – Thor could not answer aloud. He could only nod his head in what little room the ghost’s hold permitted, and breathe.

His fingers pressed where they touched over the ghost’s waist.

It felt so real.

The ghost’s mouth pulled back into a grin, showing its teeth.

“I will give you your chance,” it said, moving its hand from his chin to trail down Thor’s chest. It pressed its palm flat to push him down until his back met the bed. “Will you do exactly as I bid?”

“Yes,” Thor gasped, his breath catching. One of the ghost’s fingers trailed a line down his chest. The thin cloth of his bedclothes parted and dissipated into nothing, not unlike when Loki summoned and dispelled his armor. Thor shivered as cool evening air met his skin, the ghost’s touch continuing down, leaving him exposed in its wake. “Anything.”

The ghost leaned over him. It pushed Thor’s legs apart and filled in between.

“Open yourself to me,” it whispered close to his lips.

Thor could not speak. He let himself be parted, could think of suddenly no reason why he should not. The ghost brushed a single finger along the length of his arousal, driving a gasp from Thor’s depths that left him trembling.

He had not realized the state of his need.

The ghost’s leathers and tarnished metal disappeared in a similar manner. Positioned above him, it leaned down, mouth only barely touching Thor’s as it whispered.

“I will take my vengeance from you a little at a time. Very, very slowly.” It kissed him, fierce and possessive, fingers of one hand entwining to lock Thor’s arm down against the bed.

In the distant part of him that could still think, Thor wondered how this could not be real.

How he could not have known such want when Loki was still alive.

“And you will welcome it.”

“Yes,” Thor gasped, baring his throat. Giving him everything. “Loki...”

“Speak those words to me again.”

“I love you...I have always loved you...”

“Again.”

“I love you...”

“Again...”

The words came easily now, spoken not with thought, but with a desperation too long denied.

“Warm me, brother.”

The ghost of Loki’s memory held him down. Cold hand bound with his, the other readying him inside. It took what it wanted, demanding and without explanation. As Loki always had.

And, as Thor always had, he gave.


End file.
